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Five Penguin Group Titles Longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize 

The longlist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize was announced this week, and on it were five books published by Penguin Group. In addition to Sarah Waters' Little Stranger (Riverhead) and two Viking titles making the list: JM Coetzee’s Summertime (on sale 12/28) and William Trevor’s Love and Summer (on sale 9/21); Ed O’Loughlin’s Not Untrue & Not Unkind (Penguin Ireland) and Colm Toibin's Brooklyn: A Novel, published by Penguin UK, also made the cut.

The Prize, worth £50,000, is awarded to the author of the best full-length novel in the opinion of the judges, and usually guarantees major spikes in sales for the work.

The shortlist will be announced on September 8th, with the winner revealed on October 6th in a ceremony at London's Guildhall.

Read more about William Trevor’s Love and Summer here.

Another Successful Year for Penguin Group (USA) Authors at the 29th Annual Romance Writers of America National Conference

This month, 5,000 romance authors, industry professionals, booksellers, and fans from all over the world gathered in Washington, DC for a four-day event filled with workshops, networking opportunities for aspiring writers, book signings, cocktail parties, and awards ceremonies.

Of the awards given to published romance authors, perhaps the most prestigious is the RITA. Named after RWA’s first president Rita Clay Estrada, the RITA has become a symbol of excellence in the romance novel industry. Of the roughly 1,200 romance novels entered into the competition each year, just twelve will win awards, each in difference categories.

This year, one third of the RITAs given were awarded to Penguin authors. The winners were Pam Rosenthal’s The Edge of Impropriety (Signet Eclipse) for Best Historical Romance, Joanna Bourne’s My Lord and Spymaster (Berkley Sensation) for Best Regency Historical Romance, Nora Roberts’ Tribute (Putnam) for Best Novel with Strong Romantic Elements, and Tera Lynn Childs's Oh. My. Gods. (Dutton Children's Books) for Best First Book. Congratulations on a great year!

Read an excerpt from Nora Robert’s Tribute.

Viking/ Penguin's Ahmed Rashid Named Finalist for 2009 Asia Society Award

Ahmed Rashid, author of Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia (Viking/ Penguin), is a finalist for the 2009 Asia Society and Bernard Schwartz book award. Asia Society will announce the finalists, and the jury will take until mid-September to deliberate further and select one winner from this group. The winning author will receive the prize and will be honored at a luncheon at Asia Society in New York City in late October or early November.

More info about Asia Society can be found here.
 

Penguin Group (USA) Titles Rank Near the Top of NPR’s “100 Best Beach Books Ever” List

National Public Radio just announced its “100 Best Beach Books Ever” list, and twenty titles from Penguin Group (USA) made the list, with three in the top 10: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead) is ranked #3 and Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding (Viking/Penguin) is #4. In addition, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Penguin Classics’s top-selling public domain title so far in 2009, is #5. This list was compiled after nearly 16,000 NPR listeners cast more than 136,000 votes. Here are the other Penguin titles that were included:

• 13. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (Putnam)
• 32. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Penguin)
• 41. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (NAL)
• 42. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Penguin)
• 47. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (Penguin)
• 50. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (Berkley)
• 51. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Penguin)
• 64. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner (Penguin)
• 67. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (Plume)
• 72. The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy (Berkley)
• 74. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Perigee/Penguin)
• 76. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Penguin)
• 81. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (Penguin)
• 94. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris (Ace)
• 96. The Shining by Stephen King (Signet)
• 97. How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan (NAL)
• 100. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (Puffin)

To view the full NPR list of “100 Best Beach Books Ever,” click here.

Penguin Weekly Update, Literary Awards, Penguin Books